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Lawrence Kasdan & Abrams Take Over Writing 'Star Wars: Episode VII'

"I've got a bad feeling about this." Shortly after the news surfaced that Disney was going to make Star Wars: Episode VII, one of the first bits of real news was that Toy Story 3 and Little Miss Sunshine writer Michael Arndtwas going to write the sci-fi saga sequel. However, it sounds like the writer has had some trouble locking down the script as Lucasfilm has announced Arndt will no longer be working on the screenplay and writing has been taken over by The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi writer Lawrence Kasdan and director J.J. Abrams. I guess we got that official Star Wars news we all wanted.

Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy says:

"I am very excited about the story we have in place and thrilled to have Larry and J.J. working on the script. There are very few people who fundamentally understand the way a "Star Wars" story works like Larry, and it is nothing short of incredible to have him even more deeply involved in its return to the big screen. J.J. of course is an incredible storyteller in his own right. Michael Arndt has done a terrific job bringing us to this point and we have an amazing filmmaking and design team in place already prepping for production."

Our sources had told us a couple weeks ago that there were meetings happening with Michael Arndt about the script, and that J.J. Abrams wasn't completely satisfied with the script. At the same time, meetings were happening with Lawrence Kasdan, some of them with Arndt present, and others without. We're not sure if this is bad news or good news. Obviously, it's good that they're fixing the script before production begins, but since the press release also says, "Shooting is scheduled to begin Spring 2014 at Pinewood Studios for an expected 2015 release," they should probably hurry.

Kasdan is a great choice to get Star Wars back to its roots since he wrote the two original trilogy sequels, not to mention Raiders of the Lost Ark for George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Kasdan is also supposed to be writing a spin-off film that features origin stories of unknown characters from the original trilogy, but we don't know any details on that. We imagine that with this news, there likely won't be a teaser trailer as some online outlets have hypothesized with the release of the recent teasers for the classic films. But Thor: The Dark World does hit IMAX on October 30th, and that would be a hell of a surprise. Stay tuned.